But, curious, wasn’t it?

Chapter Two.

Manoeuvring.

CONTENTS

 O! slippery state of things. What sudden turns, What strange vicissitudes in the first leaf Of man’s sad history. To-day most happy, And ere to-morrow’s sun has set, most abject! How scant the space between these vast extremes. 

The recollection of my strange visions which, I confess, somewhat affected me on my first waking, I put off from me at once. What were they, after all, but dreams, “begot of nothing but vain fantasy?”

I reasoned thus, philosophically, reflectively, rationally, within myself, as I dressed.

I determined to dismiss the matter from my thought at once; for, even if it prognosticated anything and was intended to withdraw the veil from futurity, it ought only to convince me of one fact, or fancy, namely, that, notwithstanding that I might have a hard struggle to win my darling, I should win her in the end:—that, also, in spite of antagonistic mammas and contrary circumstances, she would then be my own, my very own Min!

Would you not have thought the same in a like case?

I trow, yes!

I will not deny that I expended the most elaborate pains on my toilet that afternoon, before waiting upon Mrs Clyde in accordance with my promise to Min. I did not otherwise comply fully with the essential requirements of Madame la Comtesse de Bassanville’s Côde Complet du Ceremonial—such as causing an influential friend, who could speak of my morals and position, to have a previous audience with “the responsible relation” of “the young person who had attracted my notice;” nor, did I don a pair of “light fresh-butter-coloured kid gloves.” Still, I undoubtedly betrayed a considerable nicety of apparel all the same.

Indeed, I absolutely out-Hornered Horner; and, had anybody detected me when engaged in the mysteries of the dressing-room, I would certainly have been supposed to have been as anxiously considerate respecting the choice I should make between light trousers and dark, a black coat and a blue one, and whether I would wear a white waistcoat or not, as a young lady costuming herself for a ball, and 

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